BAMAD no.69

&nbspBrit-Am&nbsp&nbspDNA and&nbsp&nbspAnthropology Updates&nbsp

Updates in DNA studies along with Anthropological Notes of general interest with a particular emphasis on points pertinent to the study of Ancient Israelite Ancestral Connections to Western Peoples as explained in Brit-Am studies.

This marker shows the progress of the 'Aryans' into India and beyond. These
Indo-Iranians spoke a language which is believed to be the forerunner of many
modern tongues.

Some people living high in the mountain valleys of Central Asia still speak a
form of Sogdian - the oldest living Indo-Iranian tongue.

The study also shows how successful emigrants from Central Asia were able to
spread their language further than their genes.

DNA samples from Iran show far fewer Indo-Iranian markers in the west of the
country, despite an Indo-Iranian language being dominant across the region.

Modern diversity

One explanation, said Dr Wells, could be that the incomers were so successful
that the original inhabitants of the region began to adopt the newcomers'
language.

Modern Central Asia's diverse genetic mix is explained by the migrations that
came much later, when the Silk Road carried wealth and trade goods from China to
Europe and back.

These migrations are reflected in the DNA, too, and it is clear that despite the
majority of modern Central Asians speaking Turkic languages, they derive much of
their genetic heritage from the conquering Mongol warriors of Genghis Khan.

"Central Asia is revealed to be an important reservoir of genetic diversity, and
the source of at least three waves of migration, leading into Europe, the
Americas and India," the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
2. Blond Australian Aborigines and
Melanesians
Blonde antipodals
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/04/blonde-antipodals.php
Extract:
Now, a reasonable question to immediately ask is "is this introgression from
admixture with Europeans?" I gave some reasons why this is unlikely earlier, but
I think we should not rule it out in the case of Melanesians because it is well
known that the peoples of the Pacific have had intercourse (so to speak) with
European seamen for the past several hundred years. But, there is a reason for
believing this is indigenous: the hair color is often the only "evidence" of
European ancestry one can find in these individuals. Their skin is very dark,
they never have light eyes and their facial features are population-typical.
Granted, if you had admixture in the past and subsequent random mating you would
expect that within a large enough population fragments of European traits would
emerge now and then, but the key is that non-black hair is the only "European
trait" in evidence. To me the most important point is that blue eyes don't ever
seem to show up even though this trait is more common than blonde hair among
Europeans.

So let's assume the veracity of this trait. Some of us, who have read our C.S.
Coon aren't surprised by non-black hair among the indigenous peoples of the
southwest Pacific, the question is, why do we see this trait only here outside
of Europe? I don't know, but one pet idea I have is that during Neolithic
revolution in Asia a lot of peculiar human variation was wiped out by the
demographic wave of advance of Chinese rice farmers. Only in places like Papua
New Guinea, Melanesia and Australia have out-of-the-norm appearances remained.

Now, another final question, why are the Aboriginals so damn dark so far south?
Julian O'Dea has pointed out that Tasmania is at the latitude of Corsica, so the
southern continent isn't that far south, but, Napoleon was a white man. I
proposed at one point that deme-to-deme diffusion of alleles from fair skinned
northern Eurasian populations couldn't move past the cordon of tropical
southeast Asia, and that Australian Aboriginals did not possess the standing
genetic variation from which selection could operate, but they had enough
variation to exhibit a hair color range.
3. Bushmen DNA Vastly Separated from
Each Other!
Complete Khoisan and Bantu genomes
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/
Extract:
It's striking that two Bushmen are more different from each other than a
European and an Asian are.